Welcome back! And welcome to what I labelled "The Christmas Special". When the original series ended, I was as confused and upset as everyone else and immediately started searching for the Christmas Special. I was sure there had to be a Christmas Special, and that I had simply overlooked it.
More than a year later, and that Christmas Special still hasn't emerged. So I decided to write my own.
Buddy Talk
Six months later: Boxing Day (December 26th)
"Ha," Tom said. "Christmas morning. What a splendid occasion! - Can there be anything more delightful than a happy family gathering on our sacred saviour's special day?"
Sidney rolled his eyes. He could think of many more delightful pastimes than having to listen to his brother's festive catalogue speech on Christmas morning, especially since in reality, it was not Christmas morning, but Boxing Day noon.
"Perfect," Sam from the production team said. "You're such a natural on-screen, Tom – we'll have to make sure you're not stealing someone's show." He gave a wink. "Now it's just the reshoot of the children opening their presents, and we'll be done until the ball tonight."
"Is this really necessary?" Mary asked as Jenny, Alicia, and Henry duly shuffled over to gather under the purple Christmas tree. Little Jamie, who had somehow escaped everyone's attention, was crawling behind them, swiping the Conservatory's floor as he did so.
"It is necessary!" Tom informed his wife. "Christmas at Sanditon!" He painted a frame in the air in case she could not picture it. "A special memory of a special day!"
"But it's the fifth time since yesterday morning that they have to unwrap their presents," Mary told Sam. "Surely, you must have enough material by now." He did not get a chance to answer.
"It's Christmas," Eliza announced, stowing her phone away and positioning herself between the chimney sill and the Christmas tree. Wearing a white and pinkish dress, she melted perfectly into this year's purple decorations. "We want it to be perfect, don't we, Mary? – Children!" She clapped her hands. "This time, I want no mess. No fights with the gift wrap, no tearing the stockings off the rail, no tree collapsing."
"That wasn't us," Jenny said. "That was Uncle Sidney's friend."
Sidney sighed. Earlier today, during the fourth take of the children's happy opening of Christmas presents, and probably in a state of morning inebriation, Crowe had collided with the tree, causing it to topple over. Which was very annoying because the tree, as all the purple decoration, had been sponsored by one of Eliza's advertising partners. Part of the contract was that the tree and the company colours featured prominently in the Christmas scenes.
However, with most of the purple glass baubles shattered into pieces, the tree looked barely presentable now. Mary had suggested adding the traditional Sanditon Christmas decoration that had been assembled by generations of Parker women throughout the last two hundred years. This innocent idea had caused Eliza to start a long and detailed lecture on the principles of decorative colour schemes and how a wooden pendant lovingly carved by a Parker child in a previous century would ruin it all.
On the plus side, however, this was just the kind of drama the production people loved, so they had shot plenty of material of Eliza explaining Christmas decoration and Mary and Kamila clearing away the mess.
Crowe had never been seen since, leaving them with a battered tree, re-used gift wrap and three main protagonists growing visibly weary at the prospect of unpacking their presents for the fifth time.
Life in reality TV was anything but easy, especially with Eliza Campion in charge of it. "Now, children… you go there… and you… no, don't turn away – No, no! Mary, Johnny keeps ruining the scene!" It would help, of course, if only she bothered to remember the children's names, Sidney thought as Mary rushed in to stop Jamie from happily munching on a purple glitter bow. Somehow, relations between Eliza and the youngest Parker generation had remained strained ever since the buttercream incident on the open-day.
No. Open-day was one of the forbidden words. One of those words banned from his vocabulary, just like golf cart, cove, balcony, assumption, babysitter, nerd. And dimple.
"Your turn, Sid," Sam reminded him.
Sidney sighed, put on a brave smile and walked into the scene. As directed, he kneeled down in front of Henry and asked him for the fifth time what he had discovered in his Auntie Eliza's present. By now, Henry knew the drill. He held a cardboard box into the camera.
"Wow," Sidney said. "That's a great… great… err, Roboflex Monster Toy Figure." Henry was staring at him, unimpressed and as if he wanted to say: Are you serious, Uncle Sinney?
"And look at that," Sidney continued. "It can move its head, arms and legs and collapse into a… a… err, lorry." It had become undeniably apparent over the weeks of filming that he was not a "natural" like Tom and that he was not going to steal anyone's show.
On the contrary: as soon as the cameras started rolling, Sidney usually forgot what he was supposed to say or where he was expected to move. He did not even look like his own true self: he came across as the son of Norman Bates and the wicked witch from Hänsel und Gretel, a crooked figure squinting over his shoulder with a wary expression on his face. He hated watching the material of the daily shoots. It was as if the cameras around him were able to capture a part of him that he would have rather kept hidden from the world.
Sidney suppressed another sigh. Behind him, Jenny and Alicia did their best to become enthusiastic about the Roboflex Warrior Queen Toy Figures they had unwrapped for the fifth time, and Eliza reminisced about her happy childhood Christmases. "…and my sister and I used to hold each other by our hands and sing carols under the tree," she chirped. "What do you think, children? Which carol do we want to sing?"
According to the script, Jenny would now suggest "Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer", Alicia would hold the Roboflex Singin' Reindeer Rudolf Figure into the camera and press its tummy to make it start blaring the song, and Eliza would clap enthusiastically and explain that Rudolf was her all-time favourite Christmas carol. However, before Jenny could so much as open her mouth, Henry had covered his ears with his hands and cried: "No! No! No! I don't want Rudolf!"
This was quickly developing into a crisis, and crises were what reality TV was made for. As the cameras zoomed in, Eliza sailed towards Henry, kneeled down in front of him and switched on her sweetest auntie smile: "But it's such a lovely Christmas song. Your sisters would love to sing along, wouldn't you, girls?"
Henry had never been less interested in what his sisters might love. He kicked the box of his Roboflex Monster Toy Figure at Eliza, cried "No!" and with a monumental sob fled into his Uncle Sidney's arms.
"That's enough, Eliza!" Sidney heard Mary say, and he thought exactly the same. It was enough.
He felt Henry's hot tears wet his shoulder as his nephew cried about an injustice that had confronted him with the same ugly plastic figure and the same silly song five times in a row, his small body vibrating in the true and overwhelming despair only a child can feel when lost in the adults' strange world.
It was enough. More than enough.
Sidney was vaguely aware of Eliza staring at them aghast, and of Mary, standing by, ready to move in with some motherly affection should he let go of his nephew.
But he did not want to let Henry go. His despair, and his hot tears as well, were his own. He gathered him a little closer and lifted him up.
"How about some buddy talk, Henry?" he whispered. His nephew sniffled "Yes", smearing his snotty nose on Sidney's shirt. Sidney carried him away from the cameras, the cables and the spotlights – and from Eliza. "Sidney!" she screeched. "We are filming!"
He did not listen. He carried his nephew from the mayhem of the set in the Conservatory across the lobby to the peace of the gym and settled down with him on the bench across from his other best friend, the punching ball. After nestling down on Sidney's lap, Henry's sobs slowly subsided into hiccups.
"I'm sorry it's such a horrible Christmas, Henry," Sidney finally said, wishing he had a tissue handy. "I didn't realise…" His voice trailed away as he stared into the void. What he had not realised when he had agreed to this ridiculous TV deal was how much it would change their lives.
On the plus side, they had gained financial stability and a certain publicity even before the broadcast, which was welcome, especially now that Regency Row was about to be re-opened. The hotel accounts were audited by professional tax advisers, there was no more fiddling around with fake invoices, and the bloody gardener had never been seen again.
Sidney had even quietly managed to interest some potential new investors. However, they all had postponed their final decisions until the start of the show in late January when the promotional impact would become apparent. But at least there was some hope of independency from Eliza's investment. And once he had achieved that, he would… well. Forbidden area, again.
On the minus-side was the production team that made sure the slightest misunderstanding was blown up to a major, TV-compatible crisis. And the inconvenience that the hotel lobby had been turned into a selling station for ugly handbags.
On the minus-minus-side was the undeniable fact that Eliza would not win a popularity contest among the hotel workers, even though she had two staunch followers in the Beaufort sisters.
The Conservatory's service staff was patently unable to remember that the cup of tea delivered to Eliza's room every morning had to be green organic Formosa Pi Lo Chun, and no China Lung Ching or, heaven forbid, Japan Sencha. One Sunday morning, the help from the temp agency who had taken Eliza's order on the phone had told her that they were quite swamped at the moment and that they had no capacities to deliver one single cup of tea to the Denham Suite right now. However, madam was very welcome to brew her own mug of English Breakfast, using the kettle and the tea tray in her room. The help had never been seen again at the hotel.
Kamila and the housekeeping team would forever claim complete innocence when interviewed about how a pool flotation device in the form of a life-size crocodile might have ended up in Eliza's bed in the Denham Suite's master bedroom.
And then there was Manoel, of course, who on the day of the End of Season ball in September, had presented Eliza with a black service uniform and asked her with a deadpan expression to report for duty at 5 pm sharp. "We'll be a bit short of staff tonight," he explained. "I gather with your thorough knowledge of the hotel industry, you'll understand your obligation to support the team."
Manoel had not been dismissed. That was largely down to the production team who recognised good material of potential conflict when they saw it.
So this was what life at the Sanditon Grand Hotel had become during the past six months: no longer on the brink of financial disaster, but still in an unending loop of crises, now and for a change to the sound of cameras zooming in.
The real issue that had been haunting Sidney for months now was, of course, the one no one ever mentioned. Or dared to mention, he was not sure about that. Sometimes he caught Mary glancing at him in a sad and thoughtful way, but she never said a word. And why should she? After all, it was her family home that he had saved.
One inhabitant of Sanditon, however, was never shy to voice his opinion: the old herring gull. With the reliability of a clockwork, the bird left a personal mark on the shiny engine cowling of the Aston Martin. Every single day.
"Uncle Sinney?" Back in the gym, Henry had stopped hiccupping and tugged his uncle by the sleeve. "Are you cryin' as well?"
"Oh, no. That's just… well… maybe one or two tears."
Henry touched his wet cheek with a sticky index finger. "Are you cryin' because of Charlotte?"
"What?!" Sidney sat up, bolt right. "Why … why would you say that?"
"Jenny says you liked her."
"I think everyone liked Charlotte, Henry." Nearly everyone. And just to say her name made the lump in his throat grow.
"Kamila said to Esther she saw you cryin' because of Charlotte."
Of course, Kamila. Clara's successor in housekeeping had found him on that horrible Saturday back in July when he had been sitting on the attic apartment's sofa bed, leafing through one of the books Charlotte had left behind.
Two of the pages were dog-eared. A man cannot step into the same river twice…, he read on the first one. So that was how she had known the quote. If only he could turn back time. If only they could share that short moment of magic in the golf-cart again. If only Eliza had not shown up. If only he had never brought Eliza to Sanditon in a stupid, naïve and utterly idiotic attempt to deny his feelings for Charlotte.
The second dog-ear was even worse. It was for a poem.
I long to explore a distant country
hike its mountains,
discover its coasts
climb its rough cliffs
and find a hold on its high ledges
I want to feel the foreign wind
And the warm rain on my face
I want to sink my hands into its earth
I want to touch its roots
taste its salt, and smell
the scent of its wide valleys
And I want to fight with that country
I want to compete with its will
probe its limits, and mine as well
until sleep finds me and I come to rest
on its autumnal leaves
Sidney hung his head in shame and closed his eyes.
I promise you that you will have your special moment.
What a thief he was, a shabby, despicable thief.
All those nights he had been lying awake, wall to wall with her. All those nights he had been dreaming about making love to her, making love in the truest sense of the words. Showing her how beautiful she was, how he cherished her. How she made him happier than any other woman. How he would come to rest in her embrace.
"Ahem." Someone cleared their throat. Sidney looked up, his vision blurred. It was Kamila, wielding a bucket and a duster. "I'm sorry," she said. "Mrs Parker has asked me to check out Charlotte's room."
"Right," he said, jumping up from the sofa-bed, wiping his eyes. "I'm just… err, collecting the books that need to be returned to the library."
"I can take care of that," Kamila offered.
"Thank you, but … I think I'll do that. Don't want to trouble you with the fee, in case they are overdue."
Kamila was a loyal, kind and sensible girl. She had never referred to that moment again, and he had never overheard her joining the staff's many discussions about why Charlotte Heywood had left the hotel after a "family emergency" and never returned.
Half a year later, cradling Henry on his lap, Sidney felt the shame as fresh as on that first day. And the guilt. His only excuse for asking Charlotte to become his secret little London affair was his utter state of desperation at the idea of losing her. So much for special moments and distant countries.
He found his nephew looking up at him expectantly and still waiting for an answer. Are you cryin' because of Charlotte?
"Yes, Henry," Sidney finally said, weary of denying the truth. "I am crying because I wish Charlotte was here with me."
Henry needed some time to process this piece of information. "Did you kiss her?" he asked.
"Yes. Yes, I did." Sidney's mouth twitched at the happy memory of those too few and precious moments.
"Jenny kissed Davy Beard behind the bike shed in school," Henry said, grabbing his uncle's hand. "She didn't like it."
"I think if you find the right person to kiss, it gets much better."
"Do you want to kiss Charlotte again?"
"Yes. Very much. But I doubt we'll ever see her again."
"Why?"
"She was very sad when she left."
"Why?"
This was worse than the Spanish Inquisition. A five-year-old inquisition, asking all the questions the adults never dared to.
"She was sad because … I had made her a promise, and I broke that promise."
"Oh."
"Yes. Never do that, Henry. When you find someone you want to kiss until you both are old and grizzled, you have to keep the promises you make them."
"Okay." Again, Henry needed some moments to think this through. "Uncle Sinney?" he then asked. "Mummy says it's not bad to make a mistake. You can learn from it and apologise and then don't make it again."
"Your mummy is a very clever lady." If only she applied her wisdom to her own husband.
"You can apologise to Charlotte."
"I would, but I don't know where she is." In fact, she had vanished from the surface of the earth. And the sorrow about where she was and how she was - wherever she was - tormented him every single day. The last he had seen of her was the station guard handing her into the 7.16 to London Victoria on that horrible Saturday morning.
After that, no one in Sanditon had heard from her again. She must have blocked all her contacts from the hotel, and probably also had a new phone number, for there was no reply to any email, call or message from anyone. She was not much into social media either – she had relied heavily on Crowe's counsel for the hotel's Instagram account, and if she was on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else, it was certainly not under her real name.
A few days after Charlotte's departure, Mary had called the Heywood family home in Willingden – not too difficult to find out that phone number - about her reference and some paperwork, but she had only reached Mrs Heywood. Charlotte's mother, who seemed to be a soft-spoken but determined woman, had explained that her daughter was not about right now, but that any mail for her might be forwarded to Willingden, thank you very much, Mrs Parker, and bye now.
The obvious course of action was to speed to Willingden, knock on the Heywood family's door, get past Charlotte's elder brothers, ignore her hints of bulls and castration, deliver that reference in person and beg for her forgiveness.
However, he had nothing new to offer her. The situation was unchanged, and the contracts were signed: filming would start in September, and the much-needed money would roll sooner. Speaking of money: Charlotte had returned Eliza's compensation. Twice. But that was no surprise. If love was nothing to be paid for, so was heartbreak.
As the summer turned into autumn and autumn into winter, Sidney had to admit that his own good piece of advice was worth nothing: You must put her from your mind. Or else you'll go mad. There was no way to put her from his mind, not in Sanditon. Tom's office, the Conservatory, the parking lot, the hydrangea, the golf course, the cliff trail, the beach, the cove. The cove: she was everywhere. And not knowing where she really was had indeed the potential to make him go mad.
You've made your choice … But then for my sake, please also accept my choice. That was what she had asked of him, and in a strange way, he knew that if he really loved her, he would indeed accept her choice and give her the space that she needed.
Sometimes he suspected James Stringer knew something. However, after the fire, the architect did little to hide his contempt for anyone called Parker. Perhaps he was not that amiable and boring after all, and it was definitely no option to walk up to him and ask him: "Sorry, mate, do you happen to know the whereabouts of that girl whose heart I broke when you were so obviously in love with her?"
Just before Christmas, Stringer had moved to Vancouver, and in Sidney's worst nightmares, Charlotte had joined him there. He could see them, hand in hand, ambling along the beaches of Stanley Park, laughing about the stuffiness of Sanditon and the idiot that was Sidney Parker.
Those were the bad days, the ones when sleep would only come with the help of a Chivas Regal. Or two. Or three. On the good days, however, Sidney understood that he had to stay sober if he wanted to find a way out of his predicament, if he wanted to survive life in reality TV by the side of Eliza Campion - and if he ever wanted to face Charlotte Heywood again. And as he desperately wanted to see Charlotte again, the good days prevailed.
"Uncle Sinney?" Henry was still holding his hand, a warm, wet and sticky comfort. His expression was full of sincerity and compassion. "Do you want a hug?"
"Yes," Sidney said. "I think I would like that very much, Henry."
So Henry stood on the bench and gave his uncle a long and tight hug. It was the best hug Sidney had had since kissing Charlotte good-bye before leaving for London all those months ago, and it was only interrupted by Diana rushing into the gym, large-eyed and flushed.
"There you are, Sidney! Everyone's looking for you. You've got a visitor."
Notes:
The poem is still not mine, only the translation is.
Source: /schwarzes-brett/notiz/5b37fb1d297b50529e2f7ec3/persoenliches/manchmal-muss-man-einfach-schnulzen-lieben
